In our modern day consumer society plastics have dominated the market as the premier material for most applications including packaging. This phenomenon is not completely unwarranted since conventional plastics are strong while maintaining a low weight, and offer resistance to degradation by water, chemicals, sunlight, and bacteria, as well as providing electrical and thermal insulation. All of these attributes make conventional plastics versatile for many applications; however they also come with environmental concerns. HIPS (High Impact Polystyrene), a commonly used plastic polymer uses 99.8 GJ of energy to produce 1,000 kilograms of resin coming mostly from natural gas as the energy source. This resource consumption is further inflated since conventional plastics are produced from crude oil, an increasingly diminishing resource, as a chemical precursor in this energy-costly process that yields HIPS resin. Beyond these consumption issues, the process of resin production further hinders the environment by producing waste products that enter the air, water, and the ground. Some of these waste products are known toxins and other damaging compounds that can leach out over time leading to ground water reservoir contamination. Furthermore, after production, the same properties that make conventional plastics attractive for commercial applications also produce further environmental costs by preventing biodegradation which increases the demand and size of landfills to facilitate the increasing amounts of plastic entering the municipal solid waste stream.
One solution to these problems is recycling plastics, which can reduce the filling of landfills and therefore leaching of chemicals by extending the use of a material. However, this has inherent energy consumption of its own. A study of packaging materials produced from HIPS showed that 18.9 MJ was required to produce 1 kilogram of recycled material, a cost that was approximately 23.5% the cost of producing the same product from raw materials. So while recycling does dramatically reduce the environmental cost of producing virgin plastic materials it also has its own environmental vices. These problems make conventional plastics no longer a sustainable solution in applications like packaging and short-term use products in which large quantities of plastic materials are produced and disposed. It would be desirable if there was a material that provided plastic-like properties without having the environmental impact associated with typical plastics.